• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.7 no.10
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• pp.1107-1117
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• 2020

Tourism is considered one of the key economic sectors in Vietnam as it helps to promote the economic development, increase foreign exchange earnings, create jobs, and improve the living standards of local people. So, this study aims to identify factors affecting the competitiveness of Soc Trang ecotourism associated with Khmer culture based on a combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods. Qualitative research was conducted through focus group discussions with experts, and quantitative research was conducted through direct interviews with visitors at ecotourism sites in Soc Trang province. The study involves questionnaire surveys and multivariate data analysis methods (Cronbach's Alpha test, EFA, CFA, SEM). Research results from 350 respondents demonstrate that all factors have a positive impact on the competitiveness of ecotourism associated with Khmer culture in Soc Trang province. It shows that the competitiveness of ecotourism associated with Khmer culture is influenced by five factors, including: (1) religious ritual customs of the Khmer people; (2) ecotourism infrastructure; (3) traditional festival activities of Khmer people; (4) culinary culture of Khmer people; and (5) folk ritual customs of the Khmer people. From these findings, the study offers some managerial implications to improve the competitiveness of Soc Trang ecotourism associated with Khmer culture.

• Journal of Information Processing Systems
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.549-561
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• 2022

In the Khmer writing system, the Khmer script is the official letter of Cambodia, written from left to right without a space separator; it is complicated and requires more analysis studies. Without clear standard guidelines, a space separator in the Khmer language is used inconsistently and informally to separate words in sentences. Therefore, a segmented method should be discussed with the combination of the future Khmer natural language processing (NLP) to define the appropriate rule for Khmer sentences. The critical process in NLP with the capability of extensive data language analysis necessitates applying in this scenario. One of the essential components in Khmer language processing is how to split the word into a series of sentences and count the words used in the sentences. Currently, Microsoft Word cannot count Khmer words correctly. So, this study presents a systematic library to segment Khmer phrases using the bi-directional maximal matching (BiMM) method to address these problematic constraints. In the BiMM algorithm, the paper focuses on the Bidirectional implementation of forward maximal matching (FMM) and backward maximal matching (BMM) to improve word segmentation accuracy. A digital or prefix tree of data structure algorithm, also known as a trie, enhances the segmentation accuracy procedure by finding the children of each word parent node. The accuracy of BiMM is higher than using FMM or BMM independently; moreover, the proposed approach improves dictionary structures and reduces the number of errors. The result of this study can reduce the error by 8.57% compared to FMM and BFF algorithms with 94,807 Khmer words.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.315-319
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• 2019

The paper aims to investigate empirical causes of poverty of the Khmer ethnic people and suggest policy implication to help the Khmer ethnic people escape poverty in Tra Vinh province and the Mekong Delta. The study has been conducted with direct interviews with 300 Khmer households living in seven districts and cities in Tra Vinh province and with the use of multivariate regression. The research results show that a number of causes that affect poverty of poor households include lack of capital for production, lack of means of production, poor health and lack of labor, large families, lack of job opportunities or unemployment, and lack of willingness to escape poverty and education. Thus, there should be poverty reduction policy for the poor househlods in the coming time. Based on the current situation and regression results, the authors propose a number of recommendations: 1) Focus on preferential loan policies for poor people 2) Provide occupational training programs for improving incomes for the Khmer ethnic households 3) Build up special infrastructure in the Khmer ethnic areas 4) Focus on promoting cultural and belief institutions in areas of the Khmer ethnic people and 5) Improve and build up healthcare clinics services and facilities.

• Journal of Information Technology Applications and Management
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.11-28
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• 2016

In this paper, we proposed a dictionary extension and a ternary decomposition technique to improve the effectiveness of Khmer word segmentation. Most word segmentation approaches depend on a dictionary. However, the dictionary being used is not fully reliable and cannot cover all the words of the Khmer language. This causes an issue of unknown words or out-of-vocabulary words. Our approach is to extend the original dictionary to be more reliable with new words. In addition, we use ternary decomposition for the segmentation process. In this research, we also introduced the invisible space of the Khmer Unicode (char\u200B) in order to segment our training corpus. With our segmentation algorithm, based on ternary decomposition and invisible space, we can extract new words from our training text and then input the new words into the dictionary. We used an extended wordlist and a segmentation algorithm regardless of the invisible space to test an unannotated text. Our results remarkably outperformed other approaches. We have achieved 88.8%, 91.8% and 90.6% rates of precision, recall and F-measurement.

• Journal of Information Science Theory and Practice
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.12-21
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• 2023

This study aims to develop ontologies regarding cultural knowledge of Thai-Khmer textiles by applying the Knowledge Engineering Methodology to build upon the ontologies. The process includes 1) generating the ontologies' objectives, 2) building ontologies, and 3) evaluating the ontologies. The researchers used OntOlogies Pitfall Scanner (OOPS!) to minimize defects and asked two experts to evaluate the ontologies' design. Protégé was used to design the ontologies, and WIDOCO was used to present the ontologies through the World Wide Web. It was found that the developed ontology consists of two classes, 16 sub-classes, and 16 relationships. The ontologies assessment found that there were seven items to fix according to the OOPS! software. Apart from the assessment program, the experts mentioned that all five aspects were suitable; namely, the ontology design was evaluated at 4.51 (Likert), the process of identifying scopes of definitions and objectives of development was 4.61, the applications and guidelines for further development was 4.58, the process of forming classes was 4.53, and the process of generating class's properties was 4.50.

• SUVANNABHUMI
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.49-88
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• 2020

Two utilitarian and symbolic objects associated with womanhood in Cambodian culture are the stove and the pot. The pot is a symbol of both the womb and female sexuality; the stove is a symbol of gendered feminine labor. This article argues that the sexist representations of the Khmer female body by modern Cambodian male artists demonstrate an inherited legacy of Orientalist stereotypes. These images were formed : under French colonialism and often depict Khmer women as erotic/exotic native Others. Starting in the 1970s, however, if not earlier, Cambodian women began to question the gendering of social roles that confined them to domestic space and labor. This form of social questioning was especially present in pop songs. In recent years, contemporary Cambodian woman artists such as Neak Sophal and Tith Kanitha have made use of rice pots and stoves in their art as freighted symbols of femininity. Neak created an installation of rice pots from different households in their village, while Tith rebelled against this gendered role by destroying cooking stoves as an act of defiance against patriarchy in her performance art.

• SUVANNABHUMI
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.79-103
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• 2015

Just how does one make sense of the genocide perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge during its rule in the 70's and the numerous human rights violations in the Philippines during the Marcos period? Like the conflicts that have marked human history at the close of the 20th century, Southeast Asia is no exception, similar to the many attempts to come to terms with the past and put to account wrongdoers worldwide. The paper is an attempt to historicize these two seemingly unrelated events and analyze them from the synoptic frameworks of transitional justice and reparations. Similar to the experiences faced by many societies transitioning towards democratic rule, notably in Latin America, the dilemma of whether to pursue justice or preserve the peace and the newfound status quo has characterized the length at which justice had eluded the victims in Cambodia and the Philippines. Yet, no matter what the limits are in pursuing accountability, or these so called historical injustices, closure is still achievable. The paper would like to argue that closure is possible when one, all or a combination of the following, depending on the gravity of the crime, is present-truth-telling, prosecution for the crimes committed, and a grant of compensation.

• Journal of Contemporary Eastern Asia
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.35-40
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• 2011

The recent listing of Preah Vihear Temple as a World Heritage Site has awakened a longtime simmering border dispute between Thailand and Cambodia over a few square kilometers surrounding the ancient Khmer Temple. While the listing of the site by UNESCO was expected to revive the economy of the impoverished border towns near the temple due to the increased tourism and funding for the preservation of the archeological site, it has had the opposite effect due to the sharp increase in violent conflict carried out by the armed forces and nationalist activists from both sides. Military skirmishes and violent protests have brought the local economy to a halt in addition to causing considerable physical damage to the local infrastructure and to the local transnational network of ethnic Kui, local business owners, Khmer and Thai villagers. This paper shows how the dispute is viewed and undertaken by three distinct communities involved in the conflict, the militaries, the metropolitan political elites and activists, and the local villagers. The three communities represent three different cultures of conflict with different interests and most importantly with differential access to the media and official representations of the dispute.

• SUVANNABHUMI
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.89-110
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• 2021

The Ramayana is a very popular epic in Southeast Asia. It is the story of King Rama who must save his kidnapped wife, Sita. After Sita was abducted by the Demon King Ravana (Tosakanth) and taken to Lanka, Rama and his brother rescued her with the help of the monkey warriors, especially with the help of the Monkey King Hanuman. Along the way, the epic teaches Hindu life lessons. Today The Ramayana is told and retold through literature, theatre, orally, in movies, and is referenced in many other forms of popular culture. Nowadays, in Thailand, Ravana and Hanuman deconstruct the role of divine and become folk deities that also find their places in calendar art, advertising and stamps, etc. And in Vietnam, Ravana and Hanuman have become the two figures that can't be absent from Southern Vietnam Khmer ceremonies. In this article, our aim is to show how Ravana and Hanuman became symbols of popular culture (case studies in Thailand and Vietnam). The data provided in this article is drawn from field surveys with reliable reference resources.

• Journal of the Korea Society for Simulation
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.23-34
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• 2017

During Khmer Rouge Regime, Cambodian pop music was completely forgotten since 90% of artists were killed. After recovering from war since 1979, the music started to grow again in 1990. However, Cambodian popular music dynamic and flows are observably directed by the multifaceted socioeconomic, political and creative forces. The major problems are the plagiarism and piracy which have been prevailing for years in the industry. Recently, the consciousness of the need to preserve Khmer original songs from both fans and artist have been increased and become a new trend for Cambodia young population. Still, the music quality is in the limit state. To increase the mind-set, the feedbacks and inspiration are needed. The study suggested a music ranking website using sentiment analysis which data were collected from Production Companies Facebook Pages' posts and comments. The study proposed an algorithm which translates from Khmer to English, doing sentiment analysis and generate the ranking. The result showed 80% accuracy of translation and sentiment analysis on the proposed system. The songs that rank high in the system are the songs which are original and fit the occasion in Cambodia. With the proposed ranking algorithm, it would help to increase the competitive advantage of the musical productions as well as to encourage the producers to compose the new songs which fit the particular activities and event.